You will soon be running Android Apps and Games on your Raspberry Pi 3
Google is reportedly working to add support for the Raspberry Pi 3 to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) repository, the framework of Google’s Android mobile operating system. It is preparing “support for Android to interface with the Pi” rather than actually getting Android officially supported on the Raspberry Pi 3.
For those unfamiliar, Raspberry Pis are cheap, simple, credit card-sized, single board ARM computers with a focus on education and open source software. Due to its open nature, small size, and surplus of ports and software, it is loved by hardware hackers and DIYers.
A new “device tree” appeared five weeks ago in the public-facing AOSP codebase for the Raspberry Pi 3 (a folder that will basically include Android files that play nicely with the Raspberry Pi 3’s special mix of hardware). While has not yet been inhabited with usable code, its creation was accompanied by the comment “initial empty repository,” reports Ars Technica. However, its inclusion is an indication that a Google-compiled version of Android for the Raspberry Pi 3 may arrive in the coming weeks or months.
For $35, the Raspberry Pi 3’s hardware is remarkably well suited to Android. It comes with a 1.2GHz 64-bit Broadcom BCM2837 ARMv8 CPU, 1GB of RAM, a wireless chip capable of Bluetooth 4.1 and 802.11n Wi-Fi, a VideoCore IV GPU and expandable storage via a microSD slot. It’s got a 3.5mm audio jack, too, plus an Ethernet connector, MicroSD card, 4 USB ports, and connectors for external cameras and displays. It will still run 32-bit operating systems and will be 50% faster.
